Small Aunt shot Mother a look then turned to Kancil. “In this land,” she said, “children do what they’re told and they don’t answer back. Perhaps where you come from it’s different but you will have to get used to our ways. Whatever happened in Bubat had nothing to do with Prambanan. A feud between the King of Sunda and the King of Majapahit is of no concern to us.
“What does concern us is that the only people from Sunda who venture this far east these days are thieves and cheats – bandits, every one. Your father was here when it all began, when the Sunda bandits stole the treasure from the forest temples and brought Mbah Merapi’s wrath down on us all. If you hope to find shelter here, the best thing for you to do is keep quiet and pretend you’re not from Sunda!”
Kancil looked down at her lap. The indigo dye on her travelling kain had faded almost to the colour of the morning sky and it had worn thin and soft, little more than a rag. The cakes of salt and vials of fishpaste that a few sympathetic neighbours had given Mother to trade on their journey were long gone; the basket that Kancil had carried on her back all the way from Muara Jati was empty apart from her good kain and kemben, her sleeping sarung and a shell necklace that she had hidden in the folds of her good clothes when Mother wasn’t looking.
Father had made the necklace for her while they sat together on the beach the night before he set sail for the Majapahit Kingdom. He had drilled a hole in each tiny cowry shell with a sharpened fishbone and strung the shells together with sugar palm twine, then he whispered something into each shell before he gave her the necklace. “There,” he said. “If you need me while I’m gone, listen to the shells and you will hear my voice.” His eyes were twinkling as he said this but they turned sad when Kancil slipped the necklace on. She thought she heard him murmur, “What is lost is lost.”
Mother had forbidden Kancil from bringing the necklace with her. “If they see that in Prambanan, they will guess you’re from the Sunda coast,” she had said. So Kancil had hidden the necklace and many times during the journey, when she was sure Mother was sleeping, she had carefully unwrapped her treasure and held it close to her ear. Yet she never heard her father’s voice.
She sighed. Father was gone and Mother was right; Prambanan was their only hope. So what if Kancil had to keep her mouth shut and her head bowed for the rest of her life? If that was what it took to ensure that they never had to sleep in a ditch again, then she would just have to find a way.
She couldn’t let Small Aunt get away with the slight against her home, though; she straightened her back and looked up, fixing her gaze on a point in the distance. “I will do as you say,” she said, “and I will prove to you that people from Sunda are not all thieves and cheats.”
2
CROSSING THE RIVER
From the banyan tree a path led to a river. At first the path was easy to follow; it was well used so the earth was smooth under their bare feet and it led them through a glade of shady ironwood trees. When the path plunged down the steep bank of a ravine their progress slowed. With every step Kancil’s basket of provisions thumped against her back and she had to pick her way carefully down the slope, her hands reaching for vines and tree roots to steady herself and stop the basket’s weight from sending her tumbling.
She knew she mustn’t complain. Her basket was full of gifts from Small Aunt: food for their journey to the village, rare jamu ingredients and rich palm sugar to offer Big Uncle’s family when they arrived. Mother had tried to say no but Small Aunt insisted. “You’ll need them,” she said. “You know what they’re like.” Mother and Small Aunt had shared a knowing look and Kancil wondered anew about Big Uncle, her mother’s older brother. On the journey from Sunda, Mother had said little about him. Her silence all the more notable given the praise she lavished on Small Aunt.
The river, when they reached it, was a trickle cutting through the middle of a wide expanse of silt that burned their feet as they trudged across it. They stopped to refill their earthenware kendi and cool their feet in the running water before beginning the climb up the other side of the ravine.
The sound of distant thunder was rolling across the treetops when they emerged from the ravine. Mother leaned against a boulder, her eyes squeezed shut. “I’ll be fine in a moment,” she gasped. She opened her eyes and shook her head. “Come on,” she said through gritted teeth. “There’s a pondok about halfway to the village. If we hurry, we might reach it before the rain.” As if on cue, a billowing cloud reached over the mountain to cover the sun, turning the day from bright glare to dull menace.
Fat drops of rain were falling steadily by the time the path led them from the forest to the edge of farmed land. Mother paused to strip two umbrella leaves from a tree. She passed one to Kancil then, holding her own leaf above her head, she set off along a narrow raised path towards the pondok: a thatch-roofed shelter on bamboo stilts in the middle of the farmed land. During the planting and harvest seasons, workers would rest here in the midday heat and take shelter from storms like this one. Right now though, the fields were resting and the workers were elsewhere.
The umbrella leaf kept Kancil’s head dry and the worst of the rain out of her basket but the rest of her was soaked within minutes. As she hurried along the muddy path, she held out her free hand to catch the raindrops and slurped up quick mouthfuls.
The fields on either side of her were the highest of a series of terraces – shallow basins laid out like huge steps leading down a gentle slope. Between each step water channels had been carefully built and maintained over the years, so the fields could be flooded and drained during the rice-growing season. They were empty now apart from the blackened stalks of a recently harvested dry-season corn crop. Great cracks in the earth soaked up the rain.
Kancil staggered the last few steps to the pondok. She slid out of the sling holding the basket to her back and flopped down on the springy split-bamboo floor, letting her muddy feet dangle over the edge. Rain pelted down all around and cascaded off the thatch but the eaves were wide, keeping the open platform dry.
“Here,” Mother said, holding out one of Small Aunt’s sticky rice parcels. They sat in companionable silence, savouring the best food they had eaten in months.
From the pondok the path continued south, down the steps of the terraced rice fields. At the bottom of the hill Kancil could see a bridge across a river and a village gate. She let her eyes slide away from the gate. She didn’t want to think about Prambanan yet.
“Do you see the forest temples?” Mother asked, pointing with her chin towards the west. She was doing the same thing as Kancil – avoiding the village. Through the hazy rain, Kancil could make out a dark stone spire reaching up above the forest canopy. The spire was a stepped pyramid. Stone carvings in the shape of elongated bells stood in rows around each level like sentries. At the very top of the spire was a single, massive stone bell. Several smaller spires were just visible through the trees.
Kancil sensed that Mother wanted her to be interested in the temples but her thoughts were elsewhere. She had always been told that her parents met in Mother’s village when Father went there to sell frankincense to pilgrims. But the story she had grown up believing – that they had married in the village then gone to the Sunda coast – couldn’t be true if Mother planned to make up a story about meeting him in Lawucilik.
Father must have been in Mother’s village if Small Aunt was worried they might recognise Kancil’s “foreign” eyes. Only what was wrong with that? They didn’t make her look Sundanese – the teak-brown eyes Kancil shared with Father and her brother, Agus, came from her father’s father and where he came from was a mystery. Perhaps in the village they hated anyone who wasn’t Majapahit, not just people from Sunda? Or perhaps they had something specifically against Father – but that couldn’t be right; everyone loved Father the moment they met him.
Kancil closed her eyes. There are too many questions, she thought. I don’t know where to start. Then a strange feeling overcame her; she could hear someone w
hispering. She looked at Mother to see if she had heard it too but Mother was gazing at the temples. It’s only the wind and rain, Kancil told herself. Yet she couldn’t help feeling that someone had whispered to her the question she should ask.
She stared at her basket. The necklace! Father! She wanted to cry and at the same time she was furious. All those nights on the journey when she had longed for his voice to comfort her he had stayed silent. Why choose this moment? And why this question? She wanted him to tell her he was alive, that Agus was alive. She wasn’t interested in temple treasures. She pursed her lips but now he had put the thought in her mind, she had to ask.
“Mother,” she said. “Small Aunt said something about the temple treasures being a reason why Sunda people are hated here. What did she mean?”
Mother nodded. “It happened a long time ago,” she said. “There were treasures in the forest temples – ancient gold from when the temples were built. The treasures were kept hidden except for a holy water bowl that was used for special ceremonies. Oh, it was a beautiful thing.”
Mother turned to gaze at the temples again.
“And …” Kancil prompted. Her heart was racing. She could feel Father’s presence and sense his approval that she had asked the right question. She had to keep Mother talking, if only to keep him near for a little longer.
“The bowl, everything, was stolen. They say the thieves were bandits from Sunda and that has never been forgotten.”
“Were they from Sunda?” Kancil asked.
Mother shrugged. “Who can say?” she sighed. “Here people think all bandits are from Sunda. In Sunda, people think all pirates are from Samudera. People from Samudera will tell you not to trust anyone from Melayu. It’s comforting to think that all bad people are from over the sea, or from the other side of the mountains.”
“Was the scoundrel a Sunda bandit?” Kancil asked. She felt giddy. The whispering was so faint that she couldn’t be sure she heard anything at all but she felt certain it was her father telling her what to ask.
“What?” Mother’s voice was sharp. Kancil flinched.
“It … it was something I heard Small Aunt say to you, something about a scoundrel, the scoundrel. He sounded … bad.”
“You shouldn’t listen in to other people’s conversations,” Mother said. She reached for her sleeping sarung and wrapped it around her shoulders. “This rain,” she grumbled. “It’s so cold.”
“You used to say it was good that I watched and listened, that it helped you in the market,” Kancil murmured.
“I know,” Mother’s voice was softer now. “That was before. Things are different now. You can watch and listen all you like, but you must be invisible in this village. I’m sorry, child. From now on you must be mute.”
Kancil lay down on the pondok floor. She could hear a ragged note in her mother’s breathing and it made her anxious. She searched her mind for her father’s voice to reassure her but there was nobody there. There was never anybody there, she told herself. You imagined hearing him to make yourself feel better.
In the stories Father used to tell her, kancil the mouse deer always escaped harm by using words to trick the stronger, more foolish creatures in the forest. I guess in a real forest the real kancil escapes harm by not being noticed, she thought. She curled her body into a ball. “I can do that,” she whispered.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Kancil woke to the sound of frogs and insects celebrating the wet season’s arrival. She and Mother sat in the pondok as though glued in place. Finally, Mother shifted in her seat. “Are you ready?” she asked.
Kancil shook her head.
“Come on,” said Mother, “we’ve got this far without being attacked by bandits or tigers. The spirits must be on our side.”
Kancil stretched her tired body. Father had once told her, “My father came from a land of tigers, far, far away. When he was shipwrecked on the wild coast of Sunda he heard a tiger growl and he knew he had come to a good place. The tiger is a noble creature. It can see into your soul. If your heart is pure and your intentions are good, you have nothing to fear.”
Mother had snorted when she heard him say this. “The tiger,” she said, “is a wild beast. If you see one, you should climb the nearest tree.”
Kancil had never seen a tiger herself but she liked to believe that her father’s tigers had been keeping them safe from bandits on their journey through the forest. Somehow she felt they would be more loyal than the spirits.
Mother was rustling about in the baskets. “You should wear your good kain to enter the village,” she said. “We want to make a good impression.”
Suddenly, Kancil was on her feet, lunging towards her basket. Too late. As Mother pulled out the kain she flicked it to shake out the folds. Kancil’s shell necklace tumbled through the air, bounced twice on the floor then slipped through a gap between the bamboo slats. Kancil lay flat on the floor and peered between the slats just in time to see the string of tiny cowry shells disappear, sucked by its own weight under the surface of the silty, rain-softened earth.
“What was that?” Mother demanded. The tone of her voice suggested that she knew exactly what it was.
“My necklace,” sobbed Kancil. She didn’t care if she wasn’t meant to speak. “The one Father gave me before he left for Bubat.” She cried out in pain as Mother dragged her up by the arm and spun her around.
“You foolish girl!” Mother fumed. “Seashells! You’re supposed to be from Lawucilik. From the mountains. The Majapahit mountains!” She shook her daughter so hard that Kancil’s teeth rattled. “If my brother found this necklace, he would know I lied to him about where you are from. That alone would be enough for him to throw us out. And what do you think would happen if he figured out you’re not only from the coast, you’re from the Sunda coast?”
Kancil didn’t know what would happen and she could tell from the look on Mother’s face that she didn’t want to find out.
With one last shake, Mother let go of Kancil’s shoulders, sending her tumbling back onto the bamboo floor. Mother climbed down the steps to the ground below and began to squeeze through the posts that held the pondok up above the muddy earth.
“What are you doing?” Kancil gasped.
“I’m going to find that necklace and I’m going to smash it to pieces. We can’t risk anyone finding it,” Mother replied.
“No! Please!” Kancil begged. She was thinking fast. “It’s … it’s a sign from the spirits. My necklace is like Lawucilik; it has been swallowed by the earth. It’s the spirits’ way of saying they’ll go along with our story. Please don’t smash it! If anyone finds it, they won’t know it’s mine. Please, please let it stay buried in the mud.” She knew she was babbling but she couldn’t stop. It was bad enough to lose her father’s last gift to a muddy field. If the necklace was smashed, her heart would break.
Mother sighed and squeezed back out from under the pondok. “Look at us,” she said, shaking her head. “If that’s all it takes to make you speak, what hope is there?”
Kancil sat up and faced her mother. She made two fists and banged them together: the sign for “no”. Then she mimed her mother shaking her and touched one hand to her chest to sign “me”. She touched her chest again, banged her fists then opened and closed the fingers of one hand, like a bird’s beak.
“Don’t shake me and I won’t speak?” asked Mother.
Kancil nodded.
“Don’t provoke me and I’ll have no cause to shake you!” Mother said, but the anger had gone from her voice. “Pass me my kain,” she continued. “I’ll have to change down here. My feet are all muddy, thanks to you.”
Kancil passed her the betel and indigo dyed cloth and picked up her own kain from the floor. She took a deep breath before she wrapped the kemben around her chest.
This is the last free breath I will ever take, she thought.
3
THROUGH THE GATE
Kancil followed her mother over the bridge and
between the arching bamboo poles that formed the village gate. Just inside the gate was a rickety structure that might once have been a village meeting place. It was shaped like a pendopo with a peaked roof held up by sturdy pillars above an open platform. The tops of the pillars and the roof beams were ornately carved but there were holes in the thatch and puddles from the recent rain had formed on the earthen floor.
“When I was a girl …” Mother began, then her voice trailed off and she turned away from the pendopo. “Best not to look back,” she said as she headed into the village.
A steady stream of villagers was walking in the same direction. Some looked their way with mild interest but only briefly; clearly there was something more exciting going on than the appearance of two weary travellers. Kancil turned to Mother for an explanation. Mother shrugged.
Kancil looked around as they walked along the tree-lined path. The village was bigger than she had expected; they had already passed six or eight houses on the main path and smoke was rising from the kitchen fires in many more homes along smaller paths hidden among the trees.
Further along, a crowd had gathered around a pendopo that stood in front of the high fence of a grand house. The pendopo was smaller than the one at the village gate yet even from a distance, Kancil could see that it was better kept.
Mother reached down and gripped Kancil’s hand. “That’s your uncle’s house,” she breathed.
“What’s the news?” Mother asked a grey-haired woman at the back of the crowd when they reached the pendopo.
“A messenger has come from the king’s palace,” said the woman without turning around.
Kancil tried to see through gaps in the crowd. It was a solid wall of bodies, all standing on tiptoes to see over the people in front. The lucky ones with a view relayed the scene unfolding in the pendopo to those behind them.
Tiger Stone Page 2
